Peru: strong earthquake hits Amazon

A 7.0 earthquake strikes the Peruvian Amazon.

A strong, 7.0-magnitude earthquake hit Peru's Amazon region Wednesday, being felt in the capital and as well as in Brazil. It hit at a depth of 90 miles.

The U.S. Geological Survey told Reuters the earthquake, which did not cause serious injuries or damage, hit in Pucallpa, about 370 miles from the capital, Lima, close to the Brazilian border.

"There have been no damages reported, either to structures or to people," Javier Urrelo, head of the government's civil defense agency in the Ucayali region, told Reuters. Pucallpa is located in Ucayali region.

The earthquake caused a 5.3-magnitude tremor about an hour later, the U.S. Geological Service reported.

Bloomberg News reports that the quake was also felt in Ecuador and Bolivia.

Peru has faced three destructive earthquakes in the past decade, including one in August 2007 that killed 525 people and left 200,000 homeless, Bloomberg states.

Earlier this week, a 5.8-magnitude earthquake hit the U.S. East Coast, damaging buildings in Washington, DC, and disrupting transportation. It was centered in Virginia and felt in New York and as far as Toronto and Georgia. The Tuesday quake closed the Washington Monument indefinitely to the public.

Business leaders are talking of creating a fund to handle natural disasters.

“A fund is necessary to face natural disasters, after seeing what happened in Japan and the earthquake yesterday in Washington,” Juan Francisco Raffo, head of Apec’s business consulting group, reportedly said in Lima. “We should bear in mind that four years after Peru’s August 2007 quake, the area still hasn’t been rebuilt.”